


Eponymous

by neuxue



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen, also Sarkan being extra as fuck pretty much from the day he was born, because what else would you expect from /him/?, because what else would you expect from me, names and naming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 10:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14495217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/pseuds/neuxue
Summary: Sarkanthey called him.Dragon. It crackled with smoke and sparks and a glint of malice; it burned at him like a challenge.Little Dragon, did they name you true?





	Eponymous

The child stared into the heart of the flames that warmed him even as they drew from him, and in his burning he barely felt the hands that grasped his shoulders and lifted him away, away, away, as the fire faded into his eyes.

*

"So this is our little dragon." There was a different sort of fire in her voice, not the leaping flames of warmth on winter's night, the screaming flames of the town, but instead the glowing heat of long-burning embers, the soft fall of charcoal, and beneath it the ring of metal that he would later learn as the sound of a forge. Now, it simply sounded like power wrapped in warmth.

"We found him outside Varsha."

"Are you certain that was his work?"

"Look at him."

The woman with the voice like embers knelt down and lifted his chin with a strong, gentle hand. He looked into her dark eyes, and in them saw an echo of the flames. She did not speak, and so he remained silent, though it would be some few years before he knew the meaning of 'defiant'.

"Can you make that burn, little dragon?" she asked, pointing at a gnarled tree. He looked back at her, puzzled.

"Why? I'm not cold."

The look in her eyes was another he would not put a name to for some time to come.

*

It was several weeks before they realised he had no name.

'Little Dragon', the woman with the forge-fire voice—Alosha—called him, and the diminutive stuck; the few who spoke to him directly called him variations of the same, and he answered to them all. 

"Little Dragon," she said as she helped him button his new coat—it was warm, warmer than anything he had ever worn before, and all that with no fire in sight— "today you will meet our King and Queen. Do you remember what I taught you?"

He nodded solemnly, reciting her instructions carefully to himself in his head as he had done all morning and all the previous day. His short time here had taught him that there is safety in ceremony, in certainty. _Walk in behind Alosha until she stops, then take two more steps forward and bow at a precise angle. Step back and let the King and Queen speak first, then Alosha. Answer all questions asked of him, and say nothing else. Do no magic. Set no fires._ The last had not been in Alosha's instructions, but he had seen it in her eyes, heard it in the backdraft silence that followed her warm ember words.

He had listened, and he had learned, and he knew why he was being brought before his sovereigns.

He walked in behind Alosha until she stopped, then took two more steps forward and bowed precisely. Then he stepped back, and let the King and Queen speak their ritual phrases past the slight surprise in their eyes. 

"What is your name?" the King asked kindly.

 _Answer all questions_ , she had said, but she had not given him the answers.

The silence lasted only an instant, but even that was too long. The air took on a different flavour, the silence a new texture, and he felt confusion and fear and shame lick at his insides like flames. He held himself straight, hands clasped behind his back, fingernails digging slightly into palms to remind himself _no magic_. 

The Queen leaned forward in her throne, looking intently at him, then at Alosha. He tried to catch a glimpse of Alosha's expression, for some indication of what to do or say, but he could not see her without turning, and she had told him to face the King and Queen. 

"I am called Drakosha," he said finally, drawing himself up and meeting the Queen's eyes. "And I ask your pardon for the fire of Varsha. I intended no harm."

Was the phrasing wrong? Both monarchs looked more surprised rather than less, and the heaviness in the air, the crackling that made him clench his fists harder against the sparks that wanted to fly, had not lessened. What had he said wrong? He could not answer their question, but he had tried, he had—

"Little Dragon," the Queen said softly, "cold is not a crime."

But she said nothing about warmth, he noted carefully. Words were important here. Words and silences and names and power.

"Drakosha," said the King, and the boy could not understand why he seemed almost to smile, "you honour us with your magic. Will you study hard under Alosha, and strive to use your magic for the good of all Polyna?"

That was when he understood. They hid their meanings in their careful words; he had thought there was safety in ceremony, but they had taken its comfort and replaced it with eloquent condemnation that snaked its way around him until he burned with the realisation and shame of understanding. 

It was all he could do to hold the King's gaze, and he blinked stubbornly to keep the stinging in his eyes from betraying him. 

"I will," he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could, as steady as the King's.

He would study hard under Alosha, and strive to use his magic for the good of all Polyna, to atone for his crime.

*

Court made words important, but magic made them beautiful. 

Determined to obey his King, the boy threw himself into his studies with a determination that seemed to at once alarm and delight Alosha. She handed him a book and his curiosity turned to reverence as she ran her fingers across the markings, teaching him the symbols and syllables that could grant his deliverance.

Those letters gave form to words, which gave form to magic, gave focus to magic, gave beauty to the magic that had once only responded to need. He read through spell after spell, hardly having to try to commit the words to memory as they wove shimmering structures that he filled with power. Magic swept through vaulted corridors of words and shone through delicate panes of gentle syllables, twined itself around an architecture of language and coiled itself into shining filigree at the precise touch of an accent, shaped itself to description and to precision and into reality.

And in the rush of magic along those elegant paths, as it spiralled into existence but never out of control, he found an unexpected joy. 

He heard other young students - few younger than he, though more as the years passed - complain that the words made magic stiff and unresponsive, saw them struggle to construct structures that did not collapse beneath the weight of power. He heard them stumble, sometimes, across the unfamiliar words, and watched their magic stutter in response. Could they not see the elegance in the framework of the spells? The deceptive simplicity of the ornate flourishes that breathed life and clarity into illusion? 

Many of those students left after little more than a month or perhaps a year of diligent but joyless study, taking their graceless workings with them, and leaving behind but fading memories of a name or a face. Those who stayed learned in time how to recite spells more smoothly, to construct them with artistry rather than utility.

But the boy known only by a borrowed name made magic's language his own, immersing himself in its subtleties and nuances, filling himself with the same words that gave structure to spells, that shaped will into reality, until he spoke it almost more fluently than his own mother tongue. He remembered the flames more vividly than his mother's face, after all; remembered the beautiful warmth of the magic wrapping itself around him more than he remembered her arms enfolding him, remembered the liquid syllables of power more clearly than any lullaby.

*

The language was his and the magic was his, and next to that he could almost forget that beneath it all lay a hollow name. 

But as the years passed, the name that had settled so gently from the hearthfire voice of the Sword onto a child's shoulders took on an edge of mockery in the voices of those who could not match him. 

He did not know which of them first thought to turn his beloved language against him, to define him with the very structures he had long since learned to command. He thought it might be the one with the sharp eyes that saw too much yet never enough, looking deeply but always too narrowly, sacrificing understanding for pure knowledge. But he had no proof, and soon the name spread. _Sarkan_ , they called him. _Dragon_. It crackled with smoke and sparks and a glint of malice; it burned at him like a challenge. _Little Dragon, did they name you true?_

 _I burned a city before you knew what power was_ , he did not say, answering to the name as if he had never known another. Just as well names were used most rarely by those to whom they belonged; he had learned long ago the word for dragon in the language of magic, the word to match the only name he had in the language he had chosen, but had never before spoken it aloud. It whispered to him from spells of fire and ash and glorious flight, flickered in his memory and his ambition, kindled power that threatened to burn through the delicate channels he would weave around it. Or promised to set them alight. 

_Sarkan_ , they called him, and soon the entire court seemed to have all but forgotten Drakosha. It _was_ a challenge, he knew. More than a challenge; it was a test he could not pass. The magic itself would name him, ringing his identity for all assembled to hear, sounding the name that would be written into the book of wizards, and they knew it would never be 'Dragon'. And so he would fail, and so he would fall, and so he would join them. 

*

"Good luck, Little Dragon," Alosha said softly as he carefully buttoned his coat outside the doors of the room in which he would be tested. "Do you remember what I taught you?"

He nodded solemnly, reciting her instructions carefully to himself. The other students would have been mentally rehearsing the more difficult spells, but those sat easily in his mind, their elaborate constructions perfectly balanced, perfectly understood, waiting only for him to call them into being and fill them with life.

For other students, the test was a thing of fear and anxiety and trepidation. But he has been looking forward to this day for years, anticipating the challenge and the joy that would accompany it, of performing his best magic for those who could truly appreciate its beauty, its elegance. 

He pushed away all thoughts of the ritual that would follow, for once finding no comfort in the certainty of tradition. No comfort, but instead a deep determination twined around burning ambition.

*

As the testing finished, he drew his power back into himself, letting the last of his illusions fade slowly from existence. The silence that hung in the air was that of the moment before awakening just as a dream fades, the stillness before a sigh. There was no doubt that he had passed; the testing had been more an exploration of skill than an examination of it, and there was a sense almost of loss as the last spell ended.

He bowed precisely as the assembled wizards unanimously declared that he would be granted a place on their list. Then he followed them to the library, for the last ceremony. The naming.

The spell written on the paper that Ballo placed on the table was almost simple, yet he could feel the power in it from the first syllable, building within him as he spoke the words that would give it shape—no, give it a shape along which to release itself. It would choose its own form; he was merely supplying the channel. His hands moved with certainty between the bowls of water and powder as the spell continued to build, pressing in on him even as he shaped the path along which it would flow. Then he came to the final phrase, to the words that would release his power, directing it back at… _himself_. At himself and through himself; those last words commanded the magic to know him, to see him - and commanded him, by his own words and will, to open himself to it. It was an elegant spell, and he admired its beauty even as he released it and set the candle alight with the final flick of a spark.

His own magic flooded through him like fire like smoke like wings like memory like lightning or simply light. His own magic flooded through him and somewhere far away a bell rang, but all he knew was a sudden overwhelming clarity that brought with it…self. His name, pulled from within him and around him and to him, a name shaped from will and fire and truth. _His_ name, borrowed no longer.

 _Sarkan_.

**Author's Note:**

> it was going to be something else but then it was this because I ran out of time.


End file.
